Category: For Readers (Page 2 of 13)

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: When company shows up

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THE GHOST IN THE ROOM

They had all gathered for an event called Friendsgiving. A Thanksgiving without family, and almost entirely without friends; for the most part, they were friends of friends, or rather strangers, only the most tentative of connections between them: work, church, a hobbyist group. Bearing food, they arrived. Cranberry sauce, scalloped potatoes, dinner rolls, stuffing, green beans, and so on. The turkey was in the oven, provided by their host.

Surreal and tense after the first introductions, did any of them have anything in common? They sat at the table and poured each other wine. Those who did not drink alcohol had sparkling grape juice. The candles were lit, the host raised his glass to toast: to absent friends, and to new ones. The toast was repeated.

But not quite everyone who repeated it had good intentions.

One member of the party disliked another. The second guest had no strong opinion on the first. The first not only had reason to dislike the second, but had suffered a personal insult at the second guest’s hands.

The disliking guest had taken a glance at the invitation list, noticed the other’s name, and had delayed answering the RSVP almost until the last moment. Come or don’t come? Tell the host this other member of the party had done—which was, in that circle, just across the boundary of being unforgivable—and feel the satisfaction of knowing that they had exiled this other person, as it were, from the host’s pleasant society? And yet it would spoil the evening. Or say nothing, keep the peace, and know that the pleasantry of the evening had been purchased at the price of silence, even complicity?

The first guest, who knew the host well, finally arrived at a solution.

“So I have a question for you all,” the first guest said, after the meal was well underway. “Who is the ghost in the room?”

The ghost in the room, the ghost in the room. A puzzled whisper went around the table.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, it’s just a game. One of the people in the room is a ghost; the rest of us have to figure out who it is.”

“No, no, I get it,” said the second guest, jovially, who was a teetotaler. “The ghost will seem perfectly normal right now, but later on, we’ll look back and realize who it was. Like ‘Afterward’ by Edith Wharton. The main character sees a ghost but doesn’t realize that it was a ghost until much later.”

“Yes, like that,” the first person said, grateful that they hadn’t needed to mention the story themselves, but annoyed that, once again, the second guest hadn’t the slightest awareness of the first guest’s antipathy or reason for same, although it had given the first guest an ulcer and repeated nightmares.

“What are the rules?” someone else asked.

The first person said, “That’s the fun of the game, deciding what the rules actually are in the first place.”

“Does it have to be someone actually present?” said the host. “Or could it be an invisible presence?”

That was voted down. It had to be someone present.

“Can ghosts eat and drink? Can they shake hands?” asked the host. He seemed to be particularly adamant on establishing this point, which was understandable, given that he had shaken everyone’s hand.

“They seem to eat and drink, but it’s only an illusion,” said someone, which suggestion was taken up. Later on, it was decided, the food would reappear on the ghost’s plate, the wine or juice in their glass.

“Can spirits drink spirits?” was a question received only by eyerolls and laughter. Ghosts could drink spirits, although they would tend to avoid the appearance of doing so—joked one of the guests—because it would be cannibalism.

“What about handshakes?” the host repeated.

“You can feel a chill when ghosts are present,” said one of the guests, who had always been a bit on the superstitious side. The motion was carried, however; a ghost might shake a hand, but a ghost’s hands would be inevitably chilled.

Everyone felt their neighbors’ hands. The host’s hands were warm; likewise those of the guest who had wronged the other. The superstitious guest’s hands were chilled, and so were those of the guest who had started the game in the first place, the one who had been wronged. The others were of a moderate temperature.

“We’re down to two candidates,” declared the second guest, and gave their names.

The superstitious guest stated, “Everyone knows that I have a talent for mediumship, that is, contacting the spirits. It’s the presence of the ghost in the room that makes my hands cold.”

That, too was accepted.

The first guest, the one who had suggested the game, was teased for finally being chosen. “You didn’t think that we would choose you! And it was your suggestion!”

The first guest smiled, pulled something out from under their chair, and dropped it on the table. “Feel this!”

It was felt: “Oh, it’s cold!” “It’s an ice pack!” “You’re not the ghost at all! You’re only pretending to be a ghost!” “If it’s not either of you, who is it, then?”

The host and the second guest were searched for heating packs, but nothing was found. The evening finally devolved into other pursuits. Someone took out a guitar and began singing Christmas carols. The dishes were done. People began to excuse themselves—“I have to get up early for Black Friday!” “That only proves you’re not a ghost. Ghosts never go shopping at five a.m.!”

Finally only the host, a clean kitchen, and a glass of wine remained. “What was that all about, I wonder?” he asked himself. “And planned it out, too, with the ice pack in their pocket.”

Then he distinctly remembered pouring the second guest’s glass of juice, into which he had emptied his last bottle, and which the second guest had apparently drunk to the dregs.

And yet, at the second guest’s place–the host had picked up the wine glasses from the table himself–there had been a full glass of slightly flat grape juice.

The host wasn’t the only one to have noticed. The rumors went ’round. And the second guest was never invited to Friendsgiving again.

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: Pulling into the driveway after a long trip

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DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS

How many times had she pulled up into the driveway after the trip, arms and legs tingling, tired, the backs of her thighs sweaty and stuck to her jeans, turned off the engine, and listened to the fan blow a few last gulpfuls of air onto the hot engine? How many times had she offered herself up like this?

She kept the paperwork in the glovebox, in a separate envelope from her registration and insurance so she didn’t accidentally hand it to the cops if she were pulled over: the deal, the bargain, her inheritance. It was written in words that she couldn’t read but everyone else involved took for granted, liquid words that moved on the page. The phrase duties and obligations had swum up to her once, and a priori given in perpetuity to.

Home was a word that she had not yet begun to reclaim; according to the contract—although she couldn’t read it, everyone behaved as if this were true—the word didn’t apply to this place in front of her now, the people who lived there, the memories and attachments she had formed with them, the love.

Don’t be so melodramatic! It’s nothing like that. What are you even talking about? We should get together more.

None of that mattered. All that mattered was the car, the road, the ritual, and passing the boundaries–ah yes, to the place where nobody was allowed to have any boundaries–across the dimensions to a place that didn’t really exist.

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: Lazy Sunday afternoons

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NIGHTS AND HOLIDAYS

Both chapped hands pressed up against the lazy Sunday afternoon like a kid outside a toy shop window, face pressed up against the glass, looking at a big shiny gift box labeled boredom and knowing it will always, always be out of reach.

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: Finding money I forgot about

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THE COIN

She was vacuuming, and because the cat hair had built up so much around the edge of the room, she pulled out that little tool on the back of the vacuum cleaner, the wand, and stuck the edger attachment on it. Vrrrup! went the cat hair, which was a gray haze around the edges of the room, even though the cat itself was black.

She looked at the couch and thought, I should do the couch too.

There was a fabric attachment for the vacuum wand, but she didn’t use it, it seemed like it would be breaking the spell that was allowing her to clean, suddenly she would turn into a pumpkin and go back to her normal work-from-home self, only worse, with no deadlines, no money in her savings account, and no health insurance. Cleaning was better than worrying. The small attachment seemed to take forever to vacuum the arms, the back, the ruffles along the bottom, the tops of the cushions.

She shoved the cushions onto the floor and flipped them over to vacuum the bottoms. The tops were getting a bit worn; she should just put the cushions back upside-down. Then she decided to vacuum the crevices, the hidden places of the couch, which they hadn’t bothered to upholster in nice fabric, only a thin cotton sheet that sagged on the bottoms.

A coin lay there. She picked it up, carried it over to the kitchen counter, and put it down with a clunk. The coin was dull gray, very heavy, heavier than the genuine silver dollar she still had in her flat under-the-bed box of mementos. It was more like putting down a paperweight than it was like putting down a coin.

The vacuum cleaner was still running. She walked over to it, picked up the wand, and began to run the tip over the sheer under-couch fabric.

There was another coin, right where the first had been. It must have slid down.

She picked it up, carried it over to the counter, and laid it beside the first. Where the first should have been, that was. There was no other coin.

Where had it gone?

She picked it up, turned it on its edge, and tapped it against the counter. The vacuum cleaner was still running. She looked over to the couch, still holding the coin. There was no coin on the fabric; she must be getting paranoid.

She put the coin in her pocket and picked up the wand. She ran the tip over the fabric. A few seconds later, a coin slid out of the crevice along the back of the couch and came to a stop where the first coin had been.

She reached into her pocket, which still felt heavy. But the coin was gone. Aha.

The vacuum cleaner was still running.

She picked up the coin again. It wasn’t a quarter, it wasn’t a half-dollar, it wasn’t a silver dollar. She wasn’t even sure it was made of metal. The flat gray surface didn’t look like, not quite like, silver or nickel or even pot metal, like the cheap dangly earrings she used to buy as a teenager. The face on the front wasn’t recognizable. It was a woman’s face. The letters themselves were familiar, but the language wasn’t; she couldn’t read a word of it, front or back. The obverse held a picture of a monument, or a temple, at which some other people came to worship.

She held the coin in her left hand while she reached for the wand with her right. She watched the coin, not the wand. She really kept her eye on it. As she vacuumed, the coin turned hot in her hand, so hot that she dropped it.

Before it could hit the floor, it vanished. And reappeared, sliding out of the back of the couch crevice, sliding neatly into place.

What if she just left it there? The thought rankled. She might be able to look it up and sell it on Ebay, no matter where it was from, make a few extra bucks until she got her next client. But, on the other hand, she could just leave the coin there, turn off the vacuum, and be done with it. She imagined herself suddenly trapped in a loop: the vacuum running continuously, the coin appearing and disappearing, and each time the woman’s expressionless face looking off to her left, as though she were watching something just around the corner, something terrible, just out of sight.

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: The window seat

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THE WINDOW SEAT

“Travel makes you a better person,” she would say. Well, it was one of those things, how she was raised, she was an advocate for travel the way some people are advocates for homeopathy or wearable magnets. Travel was improving; certainly it had improved her. She was mad for it. She loved the locals, she loved picking up culture, she loved being able to walk away from the insanity of the Western world and bury herself in Thailand or Japan or Nepal, she got her best work done when she was a stranger, when she lived out of a suitcase, when the monsoons cut her off from everything around her, even the sky.

She moved about once every two years, then every year. Sometimes the restlessness struck her like a sacrament after only a day or two. Humanity slipped around her, something glimpsed as she looked out the window seat, flickering past. She held her seat-mate’s chicken; she comforted a small child as its mother went to the bathroom on a trans-Atlantic jet. She went “home” to visit, but inevitably left again: too expensive, too many friends, too many interruptions!

She had always been safe wherever she went; she liked to think of it as being due to her friendly nature and generosity. And so it came as a shock when half a dozen wide-eyed men took her, blindfolded her, and tortured her in a house made of corrugated steel, mud, and blue plastic tarp with pieces of wire that weren’t strong enough not to bend as they jabbed them under her fingernails, into her ears. Who are you? Are you a demon? Tell us the truth! Is it true that you’re making everyone sick? They had been warned about her, it was all superstition, certainly she wasn’t a threat, and there was no mysterious wave of illness following her around the globe, the way they insisted upon accusing her.

But it turned out to be fine. She just transferred her airline points onto their cell phones, and then they let her go. They had a good laugh about it over bottles of kombucha, at McDonald’s.

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: Binge-watching Netflix

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THE SLOW CREEPING HORROR OF BECOMING YOUR OWN TRUE SELF

It was one of those nights where watching television had become like watching a fishing show, the kind where the angler hisses his line into the water, standing in thigh-high wading boots and wearing a vest with pockets, waits for some undefinable moment, then jerks and starts reeling in a fish that never seems satisfactory for some reason, he just throws it back into the water after a close-up shot of removing the hook from that gasping, air-drowning mouth.

A knock at the door; she hadn’t ordered delivery.

“Who is it?”

“Package.” She heard footsteps.

Tiptoeing soundlessly to the door, she looked out the peephole and caught the edge of a cardboard box in the hallway, and the last retreating edge of a brown hiking boot. She took a moment to listen for heavy breathing, then unchained and unbolted the door. Nobody coming. The enormous box on the floor was heavy, and she shoved it across the threshold and into her apartment with her feet rather than picking it up.

The box was addressed to her but when she opened it with a flimsy steak knife from the kitchen area, inside were things she hadn’t ordered, would never have ordered. She checked her bank account and didn’t see any sign that she’d been hacked, so…what? She looked at the packing slip again. The return address was for some marketing company.

She laughed at them as she took them out of the box—at first. Later, she forgot how odd it would look during a hookup with her two inflatable, non-human sex dolls on either side of her on the couch, wrapped up in her blanket, sharpening her knives, saying, “I know just what we should watch, this new show about remodeling houses where something goes wrong, like bees in the wall, or black mold, or—” She would bat her eyes seductively and pat the place beside her created when Mario Ponetti had reluctantly scooted over for the evening— “human bones.”

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: Having friends over

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DALLOWAY

What he loved best about having friends over was getting ready for them to come over, the preparation, the anticipation—the best part of anything is in the anticipation—the work, yes, there were so many satisfying little things to be done, cleaning and food, yes, obviously, but also the preparation for the preparation, the feeling of staring at his to-do list on the computer and thinking should I order flowers? and what is the proper etiquette for inviting people who are divorced, cheating on each other, lost their jobs, desperately ill, or merely no longer speaking to each other? and should I make a permanent note on the list to set the puff pastry out to thaw, I almost always do something involving puff pastry.

When they arrived he would think to himself, how delightful everyone is, how witty, how charming, and I am so glad that I prepared everything ahead of time, yes, I believe I will add that note about the puff pastry, and, when evening began to stretch, unplanned for, into the small hours, how glad I am of my friends’ successes, how glad, how glad.

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: Writing

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VESSEL

I put the pen down, close the notebook, sit back, stretch—my back crackles, I’ve been sitting still for so long—look inside the empty coffee mug in which even the dregs have gone dry, ugh my hand hurts, ahhhhh rub the palm, I have to pee, I pack up the notebook in my bag, stand up, my hips pop, my toes are cold and so are my fingers, this chair, my ass, roll head on neck, loop the bag strap over my shoulder, the bathroom, sweet relief, I feel the cold now, let the water run until it’s hot, wash hands, roll shoulders, back into the main room of the coffee shop, now I can hear the clink of silverware against china, the wail of the steamer on the espresso machine, the bean grinder, I’m hungry again, someone has already picked up my dirty dishes, thanks, an extra buck in the tip jar when it should probably be two, ugh the pinch between my shoulders, done.

My throat is sore. I have been used. I’m not sure what I’ve been used for, but the gods themselves have passed through me, and I feel little pieces of myself falling apart: bones, mostly, and sanity, disintegrating under the skin. Swollen knuckles, sore muscles, bad posture, eyestrain, bitten-down nails, have I been eating chocolate-covered espresso beans without knowing it again? Shit.

I don’t recognize the streets on the way home. It’s dark. I am someone else now; tomorrow when I try to eat breakfast I think, when did I ever like this cereal? Eventually, guiltily, I dump the room-temperature sludge down the sink.

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: Corn maze

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TURN RIGHT

The corn leaves are so dry they rattle. The people walk into the maze, laughing, joking, jostling each other. There’s always one who says

—the rule is always turn right

And then someone else says

—or is it left

—how lost can we get it’s only a couple of acres

One young man in a gray hoodie, he’s by himself, is wearing headphones and listening to music as he steps through the entrance. Is he taking this too casually, or does he need to filter out the noise in order to solve this riddle? The corn throws shadows over the ground, it sucks up the afternoon sunlight. The sun itself drops behind the mountains to the west, leaving the sky burning and bright. But the shadows are confused, it’s like being in a Wal-Mart at four a.m. on Black Friday under the flickering fluorescent lights

—was it a right or a left

—look there’s a sign saying we’re halfway through

—hey you can’t just push your way through the corn

—haha of course I can you can see the footprints in the mud where other people did it

—that doesn’t mean it’s right

—it’s a corn maze not a contest

—get back over on your side before I push you back I’ll call security

The shadows are thick upon each other, but still nobody knows the way out, the way through. They turn in circles, they can’t help themselves. Twilight is over. They pass underneath the platform that will show them their progress, a seething sea of corn with shadows shuffling through it, saying

—are we there yet

But this is it, this is everything, all that’s left is food trucks, tamales, lemonade, cotton candy, pizza, picnic tables, lights on strings overhead, “Monster Mash” over the speakers, little kids crying, discarded napkins, mud, hollow, cold, more lines, more standing, back to the car, feet hurt, gravel road, turned around, headlights, shadows, still hungry, corn

Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.

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Normal thing: Board games

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HAUNTED BY GASLIGHT

“Hurry up, roll. It’s your move.”

“I’m reading the rules.”

“I already explained them to you.”

[Laughter.] “Yeah, at length. But I told you, I didn’t understand.”

“But I already explained them to you.”

“I prefer to read them for myself.”

“I don’t see why. I spent all that time going through them, then condensing them down to—”

“You’re wrong about the clue cards, by the way. It says right here.”

“I am not.”

“Look. Right here. It says—”

“That’s not what it means. Look on this page—”

Do you want to play? It’s a new game we’re testing, called Horror by Gaslight.

I thought it was called Haunted by Gaslight. Wasn’t that what you called it yesterday?

No, it’s Horror by Gaslight. See? Right here on the top of the instruction sheet.

I find out later, from the Kickstarter, that the rule book—actually, there were two—was written that way on purpose.